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KABUL, Afghanistan — A wave of betrayal has left at least 17 Afghan policemen dead in the past
10 days. All were slain in their sleep, at the hands of those close to them.

Early yesterday, an Afghan policeman unlocked the door of the post where he was stationed in
Oruzgan province and let in his friends from the Taliban, who helped him kill four and wound eight
of his sleeping colleagues.

On Sunday, a local police commander in the northern province of Jawzjan shot to death, in their
beds, five of the men under his command. Then he fled to join the Taliban.

And on Dec. 18, a teenager apparently being kept for sexual purposes by an Afghan border police
commander in southern Kandahar province drugged the commander and the other 10 policemen at the
post to put them to sleep, and then he shot them all. Eight died and three survived.

In the crisis that has risen in the past year over insider killings, when Afghan security forces
turn on their allies, the toll has been even heavier for the Afghans themselves — at least 86 in a
count by
The New York Times this year. U.S. and other NATO forces have lost at least 62 people so
far, the latest in Kabul on Monday.

As with the three recent Afghan-on-Afghan attacks, the attacks have fallen most heavily on
police units, and they have followed a pattern: The Taliban either infiltrate someone into a unit
or they win over someone already in a unit. Frequently, the victims are first poisoned or drugged
at dinner.

“I tell my cook not to allow any police officer in the kitchen,” said Taaj Mohammad, a commander
of a border-police post near the one that was attacked in Kandahar on Dec. 18.

In some cases, personal grievances might drive the attackers to throw in their lot with the
Taliban.

Apparently, that is what happened in the Dec. 18 case. Police say Noor Agha, a young man whose
age was unclear, had been the involuntary companion of the border-police commander at that post,
Agha Amire, for several years. Other police commanders who knew both said there was clearly an “
improper relationship” between the two.

The night of the attack, Agha offered to make dinner for the police at the post and invited two
friends to attend as well. He and his friends put drugs in the food and then shot everyone there,
including Amire. They escaped across the border to join Taliban insurgents in Pakistan, a police
official said.

The wave of killings over the past year has policemen all over Afghanistan on edge.

“We make sure that nobody gets the chance to poison the food,” said Sharif Agha, 26, a police
sergeant who commands a small outpost in Khost city, in eastern Afghanistan.

“I don’t know about the rest of the guys,” he said, “but I have not slept properly over the past
few months.”